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Purely Commentary
Readying for Community Action
Jewish spokesmen wouldn't be worth their salt if they did not
assert their readiness to battle against terrorist activities on all fronts.
It is inconceivable that anyone with a spark of justice in his heart
and common sense in his mind would in any sense condone what had
happened in recent months under the exc ,, se o aiming to destroy
Israel and thereby build independence for the terrorists. It is even
reasonable to believe that many who had hitherto criticized Israel
for retaliating will now support every move to uproot the bandits
wherever they may be, whether it is in Lebanon or in Syria. Jordan's
King Hussein has already demonstrated his ability to exile the bandits.
Now, since it is necessary to fight the evil in many capitals of the
world, there are added responsibilities upon heads of governments to
exclude from their ranks every semblance of terrorist activities.
Russia more than all others faces the most damaging charge of
aiding and abetting terror. If Russia wills it and stops arming the
murderers, there can be an end to the state of terror. Perhaps Red
China then will follow suit and will stop providing Arabs with tools
of destruction.
Will the Arab potentates have enough sense to curb the terrorists
in their midst, to oust them, to stop assisting them with means of de-
struction and with comforting speeches? Tens of thousands of Arabs
are under constant watch wherever they move in European countries.
They are under suspicion everywhere. Their rulers in the Middle East
can assist them in having the taint removed from them by asserting
an assumption of a position of justice resembling civilized men.
In the interim, there is the serious duty devolving upon Jews
everywhere to be on guard and to join hands with Israel for the
state's protection. We have -n urgent task ahead: to provide the
means for Israel's sustenance.
There is need for continuity of action in behalf of Israel. We have
begun the coming year's work in our community by selecting two able
men—Samuel Frankel and Paul Handleman—for the chairmanships
of the Allied Jewish Campaign. We must labor to uphold their hands,
to work with them for successful tasks in sending word to Israelis that
we shall never let them down in the batte for justice.
•
Paul Zuckerman's New Dynamism
Paul Zuckerman means business. When he became na-
tional chairman of the United Jewish Appeal, less than a year
ago, he had a high goal: he was to enroll at least 20 contrib-
utors of $1,000,000 each and proceed from there to get in-
creased giving on an expanded scale. He succeeded. The sums
raised in 1972 set the highest record in UJA history.
Then he introduced "Operation Israel" missions to Israel
on an unprecedented scale: every mission meant increased
giving for Israel and for Jewish rescue efforts everywhere.
He is in Israel again—giving guidance to 300 visiting
Americans on missions with constructive aims. He is tireless,
he does (lot rest until the goals aspired to are reached, and it
may well be that 1973 will be another record-breaking year
in philanthropy. If it is, much of the credit will go to Paul
Zuckerman, who has become the pride of Detroit and UJA's
national scene.
•
•
•
The Innocence of a Reporter: Birobidjan Canard
It is so easy to fall prey to exaggerations! An innocent Free Press
reporter, the newspaper's women's editor, Dorothy Jurney, went to
Birobidjan and interviewed one of the Communist Jewesses there who
was understandably patriotic to her country's aims. So, the lady
she quoted gave a fairly glorious account of the Birobidjan activities.
But there is nothing in the story to justify a claim of the existence of
a genuine Jewish republic there. That was the Stalin aim, but it never
materialized because Jews who went there had settled under compulsion
and he Jewish aspect is a mirage.
There is a Jewish newspaper and it is filled with propaganda.
Whatever is Jewish of its news is the Communist anti-Israel line.
There aren't 30,000 Jews in Birobidjan but a maximum of 16,000,
and they represent a minority.
Would that Birobidjan had really served the claimed purpose
when it was necessary to rescue Jews from the Hitler terror. Now it
Is nothing more than a mirage, and it is unfortunate, even if it can
happen understandably, that reporters should be misled into believing
that a panacea has emerged in the Siberian clime of Russia.
•
•
Ben - Gurion Has Earned Two Birthdays a Year
- For non-Jews it was a curiosity: that although David Ben-Gurlon's
birthday is on Oct. 16, he celebrated it on Monday (Sept. 25) because
it was his birthday on the Jewish calendar. So, it was sensational news
about the 86th birthday of the ar-
chitect of the Jewish State.
For many of us, however, it is
a natural phenomenon: some of us
have always been celebrating birth-
days. anniversaries, special events
—twice—on the civic calendar and
on our luakh. For many it has
meant good wishes received twice
and gifts doubled!
It's a pleasure to greet Ben-Gur-
ion on his 86th birthday on the
Jewish calendar—and we'll do it
again on Oct. 16. Let's hope he
gets two sets of presents. Ile has
earned two birthdays a year and
doubled presents.
Ben-Gurion now divides his time
between his home in Tel Aviv and
as a Sde Boker kibutznik in the
13-G the Kibutznik
Negev, He prefers the latter role,
and it is his major love after leaving the premiership. Therefore, the
appropriate photo for this affectionate note to him is his role as
kibutznik.
2 — Friday, Sept. 29, 1972
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Solidarity for Humanity . . . the Simhat Torah
Unifying Force for Kinship With USSR Jews
By Philip
Slomovitz
Simhat Torah: A Day for Solidarity
For many years, there has been a defiance
of Soviet restrictions on Jewish religious ob-
servances. On Simhat Torah, for many years,
Jews had gathered in crowds, overflowing
into the street adjoining. the Moscow syna-
gogue. These had been demonstrations of
loyalty to Jewish traditions. They combined
the spiritual with the nationalist. They
marked an adherence to a heritage many of
the Russian Jewish youth were not thorough-
ly acquainted with, nevertheless they pro-
claimed their solidarity with the Jewish peo-
ple everywhere, with emphasis on Israel and
with an expressed desire to 'reclaim knowl-
edge of Hebrew for ,lewry.
This Simhat Torah will not be an excep-
tion. It may prove an even greater emphasis
on the people's desire to reclaim the legacies
Russian Jews had been deprived of.
To emphasize the solidarity, world Jewry
will demonstrate with their kinsmen in the
Soviet Union—on Simhat Torah and at public
assemblies wherever Jews are domiciled. This
Sunday, therefore, will be an historic day for
unified Jewry. It will be a day on which to
assert that tyranny is doomed to defeat,
whether it is in the Soviet Union or areas
invaded by criminally insane Arab terrorists,
whether it is the act of anti-Semites in Euro-
pean or Afro-Asian areas.
•
•
•
There needs to be a full understanding
of a situation that compels the Simhat Torah
call to action and the festival's emphasis on
solidarity that will be aimed at on all days,
all hours of every day on the calendar, until
there is an end to barbarism, until there is an
uprooting of terror and the driving of terror-
sists into the oblivion marked for inhuman
beasts who presently threaten the security of
mankind.
There are many examples of bestialities,
those in the Soviet Union and the multiplied
incidents that put to the test the Arab na-
tions, their citizens wherever they may be dis-
persed for evil deeds like those that marked
abuse of postal privileges and resort to mur-
der in Munich and at international airports.
Here is a typical example involving a great
scientist, Dr. Veniamin G. Levich, the world-
famous electrochemist who has asked for a
visa to leave Russia and to settle in Israel.
The story is told in the prestigious magazine
Science. Its a tale that should move every lib-
erty-loving person to action in defense of the
human right of any person to move wherever
he wishes. It should encourage increased pro-.
tests against the Soviet ransom schemes.
It's Science's story about the Fourth In-
ternational Biophysics Conference held in
Moscow Aug. 7-14. As the Science story goes,
"some of the activity during the (biophysics)
meeting centered around someone who was
not there"—and the reference was to Dr.
Levich, who was described as follows:
"An electrochemist, Levich has had his appli.
cation for an exit visa to Israel denied. He has
lost one of his jobs and been demoted in the
other; his books and scientific pipers have been
removed from circulation in Russia; even cita-
tions of his work in the scientific literature have
been deleted. Levich is a corresponding member
of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and the most
prominent Russian scientist to suffer the harass-
ment which appears to characterize treatment of
some Russians attempting to go to Israel."
Then Science proceeded to state that the
magazine had secured a copy of a hand-writ-
ten statement by Prof. Levich in which he
protested against being barred from the Inter-
national Biophysics Conference. This is how
he appealed for help from the world scien-
tific community in his hand-written revela-
tions:
•
. . . The reason is quite obvious. The scien-
tists who apply to the authorities for the permis-
sion to leave for Israel are magically transformed
into outcasts who are deprived of any right of
continuing a scientific activity: publications for-
bidden, lecturing forbidden, making scientific re-
ports forbidden, even being cited forbidden.
A person is immediately expelled from any
kind of scientific councils, editorial boards, de-
moted, and often fully discharged.
A person is constantly living under the con.
ditions of permanent pressure and anguish for the
fate of his family and himself. As is known, the
Soviet government gives a permission for repa-
triation to many Jews, but (to) no scientists.
The violation of the civil rights of scientists
as comp- red to other people and the transfoma.
Lion of scientists into the property of the gov-
ernment is a dangerous precedent.
TRday it is the fate of perhaps a small group
of dentists at a certain place of the world. To-
morrow it may happen to anybody and anywhere.
The brains as well as the h"nds of any human
being are his personal property.
I believe as well that the persecution of scien-
ti,,ts and the prohibition of their scientific activity
as a punishment for their moil and conscience
convictions is inhuman, immoral, and disgraceful.
. The international scientific community, I
believe, should not consider such problems as a
personal affair of each of us, but as a problem
.._ of
the professional honor, dignity and humanism
of all the scientists all over the world.
This moving plea was supplemented by
Science with an account of Dr. Levich's prob-
lems and the manner in which they are being
treated by his fellow scientists. While the Na-
tional Academy of Science has not yet taken
any action in his case, the NAS Council is
viewing it and there is consideration of a
joint statement issued by heads of national
scientific academies to M. V. Keldysh, pres-
ident of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
Among British scientists who have acted in
Levich by Sir Frederick Dainton, and another
in biophysics, Sir Maurice Wilkins, president
of the British Society for Social Responsibil-
ity in Science, whose circulated petition pro-
tests the Soviet treatment of Levich and other
"recent attempts to harass Soviet scientists
who disagree with officially accepted views."
Like other academicians who expressed
a desire to leave the USSR, Levich is not
being abandoned. He has been offered a
professorship by Tel Aviv University in its
chemistry department, and the university has
appealed to scientists all over the world to
come to Levich's aid. Several hundred promi-
nent scientists in this country, in Great
Britain and other lands have appealed to the
USSR that exit visas be granted to Dr. Levich
and his son, Dr. Yevgeny Levich.
A one-year post in the physical chemistry
laboratory at Oxford has been offered to
Levich by Sir Frederick Dainton, and another
petition was circulated by D. B. Spalding
of the department of mechanical engineering
at Imperial College of Science and Technol-
ogy in London calling on Soviet scientists "to
abstain, if they can, from any further harass-
ment of Prof. Levich and his family."
The Science report on the Levich case con-
cludes by indicating the following with an
appended comment:
"A number of those attending the Moscow
biophysics meeting were able to visit with Levick
and his family. One who did, Harold Scheraga sl
Cornell, hid his luggage searched and his plane
detained by 15 minutes at Kiev. Two National
Institutes of Health researchers who saw Levich
are Robert Adelstein and Jack Cohen. When
Adelstein and Cohen visited with Levich, Levich
drew them • graph which he said illustrated his
Present situation. The z-axis was labeled time
and the y - axis was labeled noise. Levich drew
two curves on the graph; one rose above a cer-
tain noise level and was labeled Israel. The
other peaked below and was labeled jail or
death. Both Adelstein and Cohen, as well as
others who have been in contact with Levich,
agree that more public forms of noise could
help Levich. It could also prevent the Soviet au-
thorities from turning the Levich case into a
symbol in order to discourage other Russian
scientists from trying to emigrate."
Prof. Levich's story reads like an isolated
case. But it is part of the tragedy of a large -
number of scientists, of many thousands of
Jews who insist upon the right to emigrate
from the USSR but who are now under ran-
som threats.
Major responsibility in defense of those
seeking human rights in Russia rests upon
Jewish communities. That is why the Day of
Solidarity with our kinsmen is so important.
That is why Simhat Torah assumes an added
role of great importance on our calendar. It
is important that all of us observe it dili-
gently and devoutly. In such union of solidar-
ity lies our strength, and out of it will grow
first comfort and eventually relief for perse-
cuted Russian Jewry.